The Lighthouse Witches by C J Cooke

On the island of Lon Haven off the Scottish coast stands an old, decommissioned lighthouse. This was in its turn built on the remains of an ancient broch underneath which lay a cave where, during the 1600s, women accused of witchcraft were imprisoned awaiting trial and execution. It's a place the locals fear, and keep well clear of, but now (1998) it's been bought, and the new owner has employed an artist to help turn the forbidding tower into a writer's studio. 

Liv Stay doesn't believe in witches or ghosts, but there's certainly something spooky about the lighthouse she's been commissioned to paint. She's barely settled into the adjacent cottage before strange things start to occur, and within months her and two of her daughters have disappeared, like so many islanders before them. The surviving daughter, Luna, has spent her life moving between foster homes, keeping well away from Lon Haven, trying to forget what happened there, but over 20 years later she's drawn back to the island when one of her sisters is found at last - but not having aged at all. 

I'm always on the look out for good supernatural stories, and I thought from what I'd heard online that this would be one, but overall I feel it disappointed.

It starts excellently. The author builds up the atmosphere of strange goings-on, of sightings of a small unknown child, of possible tell-tale signs of witchcraft activity gradually and carefully - enough to keep the reader intrigued; not so much that it seems completely over the top. The island's inhabitants tell of dreadful things happening in the past - the disappearance of children and their replacement by changelings - and hint that it still happens. It's enthralling; very dark and gothic, mixing terror and superstition.

But then - half, maybe three-quarters, of the way though I realised what the plot twist was, and from then I just wanted the characters to hurry up, see what was obvious to me, and solve the mystery. A bit like guessing the murderer in a whodunnit, it took the edge of the latter part of the book. 
 

The Cottingley Cuckoo by A J Elwood

 

 Charlotte Favell, one of the elderly residents at Sunnyside Care Home, has taken a strange interest in Rose, the new member of staff. With an interest in literature and fairy tales, Rose is lured by the old lady's talk of the infamous Cottingley fairies hoax, and the hints that she has letters which prove the existence of the fairies beyond all doubt. More experienced staff at the home warn Rose that Charlotte has played similar tricks before, causing trouble for her carers, but Rose's curiosity is insatiable, even though she feels she's being dragged into a dark web of, perhaps, supernatural events.

I accidentally came across The Cottingley Cuckoo on Twitter, and it probably isn't quite like my usual read but I really enjoyed it. There's a slightly slow start to the story but like Charlotte herself it gradually works its spell and hooks the reader.

 It's a difficult novel to pin down by genre - it has the suspense and twists of a psychological thriller, a tinge of supernatural horror, a subtle lack of clarity over whether Rose is being manipulated, or just an unreliable narrator. There's a clever interweaving of Rose's present day story as she falls under Charlotte's spell, and the old letters, purporting to be written by a Cottingley resident  who actually saw the fairies himself, and could attest to their disruptive and occasionally malevolent ways. At times it seems like everything is merely Rose's imagination, and that Charlotte is just the troublesome old lady the other carers she her as; at times it seems like fairies could be real, and Rose is caught up in something sinister. 

And, although there are hints and common sense alone should raise a warning flag in the reader, the ending still comes as a shock.

Witchbottle by Tom Fletcher

 Once Daniel had a family - a wife and child - and a career, somewhere in a city vaguely 'down south', but now he's living alone, working as a milkman in the rural north-west of England. His job is undemanding, monotonous, but he likes the lack of pressure, and being out driving round the countryside. Recently though odd things have begun to happen - Daniel's seeing ghosts, and it seems like many of his customers are too, and although Daniel's girlfriend can help out with a 'witch bottle' to keep phantoms and nightmares at bay, it seems to be just a stop-gap measure. There's also the mystery surrounding the men driving the Fallen Stock vans, ostensibly they're collecting dead animals from the farms for safe disposal, but Daniel feels they're up to something far more sinister.

It's a synopsis that feels full of dread and suspense, but for my taste it took just too long to get round to the creepy bits. The detail about milk rounds and the quirks of the customers would have been all very well in a different sort of book but here they just seemed drawn out, and unnecessary. When the story eventually gets round to Daniel's nightmares, and the ghostly presences appearing all over the neighbourhood, the chill factor cranks up a notch or two, but it was too little, too late for me. 

Supernatural reads

For Halloween I thought I'd look round the bookshelves and see what I had sitting waiting to be read in the way of scary supernatural reads - and these were the first to come to hand; Bram Stoker's Dracula (unbelievably, perhaps, I've never read it!), and a short story collection, Oxford Twelve Tales of the Supernatural edited by Michael Cox. I thought I'd have time to read both before Halloween, as neither are very long, but things didn't work out that way.

I started with the collected stories. Hmm, that didn't go well. I've said before that a lot of supposedly scary stories leave me cold, but in a bad way, and these did that. Despite some big names among the collection - LeFanu, and M R James, for example - they didn't seem spooky or tense to me. Maybe back when they were 'new' there was an element of surprise to them, but I found them dreadfully predictable.

On to Dracula ... although I haven'r actually READ this before it's difficult to not have some idea of the plot from films, even if they aren't entirely 'as the book'. It's hard therefore to put yourself into the mindset of someone reading the book with no idea of what will happen, of why the Count can only see his visitor at night, of why it's probably best for all concerned that Jonathan Harker does as the Count tells him and stays safely in the rooms assigned to him. I was also afraid that like some of the short stories it would just be so predictable. It was, as obviously I'd an idea of the plot, but it was still very readable. The writing conveys a definite feeling of growing dread, but having reached a high point, instead of attempting (and possibly failing) to maintain it, moves back to the more prosaic world of daily domesticity - and manages to pull this off several times. The Count of course moves to England and attempts to continue his vampiric ways here, but a group of young men, aided by vampire-expert Van Helsing, strive to put an end to him. Towards the end, I felt the story became more 'thriller' than ' 'supernatural tale' but was perhaps better for it.
It's a bit slow at time, especially when Van Helsing is explaining something, and there are dodgy attitudes towards women and 'foreigners' but in all it's a good read.




For some of my favorite Halloween reads see here over on my Other Thoughts blog

The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola

review by Maryom

Audrey Hart has traveled from London to Skye in the hope of getting a job as assistant to a collector of folk and fairy tales. It's not accepted behaviour for a young woman in 1857, but Audrey is fiercely independent, and, after quarreling with her father and step-mother, determined to strike out on her own. She's always been fascinated by folk tales; some of her earliest memories are of accompanying her mother, a keen folklorist herself, as she listened to the stories crofters told around their firesides. In her new position Audrey will be doing much the same, but at first she finds the locals refuse to talk. Then Audrey finds the body of a girl on the beach, and the crofter become more willing to talk about their belief that girls are being taken by spirits of the restless dead, appearing as flocks of misshapen birds. The local minister tries to dismiss these claims as mere superstition, and though Audrey isn't sure who to believe, she feels that something within the mystery may be linked to her mother's death many years before.

This is an excellent read for lovers of Gothic fiction - it's certainly a thriller, and if not quite 'horror' it's pretty close. The atmosphere and setting are superb. Brooding mountains, empty moorlands and wild seas set the scene, and the division of society between crofters and landowners adds to the mistrust and fear. This is the time of forced 'clearances', when crofters were evicted from homes on fertile ground to make way for profitable sheep and deer, and left to struggle as best they could on stony or boggy strips of land by the shore. At the same time, the Church is trying to take away their heritage by banning the telling of old folk tales - the very things that give meaning to their hard, impoverished lives.

I really liked the way the story moved from 'realistic' mystery to something more supernatural. Are the superstitious crofters correct, and the girls being abducted by evil 'fairies' or spirits, or is the explanation far more mundane, even if equally shocking. Audrey's opinion veers one way then the other, influenced one way by events that occurred in London, the other by her mother's deep-seated belief in folklore, and the reader is kept guessing and the tension high.

Available now on kindle, out in hardback 26/7/18.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher -  Tinder Press
Genre - Adult fiction, 

The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements

review by Maryom

Scarcross Hall sits high on the moors, bleak and isolated, but for Mercy Booth this place is home; she's as hefted to the spot as the sheep she and her elderly father raise on the moorland.

Old rumours of horrific events, and the possibility of a curse on the place, have never troubled her before, but of late a creeping presence is unsettling her. Noises are heard at night in unused rooms, small items are going missing, and, at times, Mercy has sensed a shadowy figure watching her.

Taking on a new man to help with lambing does nothing to settle her mind, and, as the year turns, the odd incidents become more frequent and far more disturbing in nature. Something evil really does seem to be stalking the inhabitants of Scarcross Hall, perhaps seeking some form of retribution ...

Set in the years after the Civil War, the Coffin Path is a dark, atmospheric tale - not quite a ghost story, in my opinion, but a spine-tingler nonetheless. Mercy is an independent self-reliant woman, taking part in the day to day practicalities of running the farm, and used to the bleakness of her surroundings and the hardships encountered there - so not one to be disturbed by a few odd night-time noises. 

The spooky disturbing atmosphere is quickly established, with Mercy's feeling of someone constantly watching, and her equivocal attitude towards the new man, Ellis, whose arrival coincides with an increase in strange occurrences around the hall, but somehow, somewhere around the halfway mark, the tale lost its grip on me, as if the tension and creepiness had peaked too early. Fortunately, the ending picks up again, with revelations about the Booth family's past coming thick and fast, and over turning much of what Mercy herself had been brought up believing.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Headline Review
Genre - adult historical supernatural fiction, 

Mind Writer by Steve Cole

illustrated by Nelson Evergreen

review by Maryom

Luke has always been able to guess what other people were thinking - to know the answers to the teacher's question, or the moves other football players were about to make - but now he can hear actual thoughts, and it's like having someone shouting at him all day. Then he meets Samira, the one person whose mind is closed to him - and not only that, she seems intent on taking over control of Luke's thoughts!

Mind Writer is another excellent book with masses of reader-appeal from publishers Barrington Stoke. The plot revolves around a boy who can read minds - which turns out to be less fun than you'd imagine, and that's before a demon tries to take over his mind! Events move quickly, grabbing and keeping the reader's attention, and the dark, atmospheric illustrations add extra appeal.

An excellent supernatural/fantasy read for the 8-12 age group; it's a little on the spooky side, but not too much so.


Publisher - Barrington Stoke
Genre - children's 8-12, supernatural, fantasy adventure

Thin Air by Michelle Paver

review by Maryom

In 1935, a five-man British expedition sets off to the Himalayas to climb Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world and considered by many mountaineers to be more treacherous than even Everest. Previous attempts to reach the summit have been plagued by disaster and death, particularly a British expedition of nearly thirty years before during which five men died but the leader, Lyell returned home to glory for his efforts. 

Stephen Pearce has only been asked along at the last minute by his elder brother, Kits, to fill the place of team doctor, and he isn't as experienced a mountaineer as the other climbers. He's eager and willing though, especially in the hope of proving himself capable in Kits' eyes, and wanting to escape various personal complications back in London. A chance meeting with Charles Tennant, last surviving member of the ill-fated Lyell Expedition,, leads Stephen to believe that strange things occurred which were never revealed in the 'official' publications about the trip ...and the scene is set for a harrowing climb. He is almost immediately on edge, believing their party is being watched, and as they begin the real ascent, and altitude sickness starts to kick in, his fears grow ...

Thin Air is a combination of adventure and ghost story, full of period detail - from the attitude of the British team towards their 'inferior' sherpas to the unappetising pemmican suppers eaten on the mountain -  and after a slow start, setting up the background with dark hints of what occurred on previous expeditions, and the long-held rivalry between the two brothers, turns into something terrifying in so many ways;

 - the sheer height and mountaineering dangers for starters. The precipitous drops, crevasses in the glacier ice, the narrow camping places where I felt they could roll over in their sleep and fall hundreds if not thousands of feet, cornices where the snow builds up a 'shelf' ready to collapse under too much weight; the physical dangers are very real and well captured.

 -  Cedric the dog - why let a dog go along? Ok it turned out the dog was based on a real life canine companion who followed an expedition up to 24, 000 ft (!) but authors are so often happy to kill off an animal while saving humans that a lot of the time I was petrified for him.

 - Oh, and then there's a ghostly, malevolent presence on the mountain. Paver builds up to its appearance gradually, as first Stephen tries to dismiss it as his imagination running wild or altitude sickness disturbing his senses but gradually comes to believe that someone or something is stalking their group, and, even if the other men can't see it, Cedric the dog knows there's something out there - and he's terrified when it approaches.

If you've read Michelle Paver's previous ghost story Dark Matter, you'll know how well she can build a creepy, unsettling atmosphere - and she's done it again here, in a very different environment. I for one couldn't put the story down but needed to read on to the final resolution before trying to sleep!


Maryom's review - 4 stars 
Publisher - Orion Books
Genre - adult fiction ghosts mountaineering 

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

review by Maryom

In the north-west of England lies an empty, flat stretch of coastline known as the Loney; a place where few people live, sand shifts with the tides sweeping across the bay, and the unwary are caught out by rapidly rising water. When storms cause a landslide on the tidal island of Coldbarrow, and the body of a baby is discovered, the narrator is drawn back into events which unfolded thirty years ago. He and his family were part of a church group visiting a shrine in this remote area, in the hope that his brother, Hanny, born with speech and learning difficulties, would be miraculously cured, but boys left to find their own amusement tend to gravitate towards trouble, and things didn't go quite according to plan ...

The Loney was one of the options offered as a read for my book club, and, having heard so much praise for it, I was eager to read it.

Hurley creates the setting brilliantly - the desolate coast, mud flats quickly covered by incoming tides, inhospitable locals, strange objects and hidden rooms found in the holiday house. It all adds up to a tense, eerie atmosphere. I could feel the wind whipping in from the sea, the sands shifting beneath my feet, and imagine the causeway leading out across the flat expanse of mud, but as the story progressed I felt the creation of atmosphere wasn't enough.
It's clear that events are moving towards a big reveal, but somehow it didn't deliver for me,and this is what . A lot of the set up - people revisiting a place after several years absence, strange behaviour of the locals who appear to be part of a pagan cult, remote setting -  all these things feel familiar even if only from films such as The Wicker Man or Hot Fuzz, so there's ample warning of what might happen as events unfold. Even when the crucial event, on which the whole plot revolves, is revealed, I thought, yep, seen that on Babylon 5 (though it's a fairly common sci-fi/fantasy trope which you might have encountered somewhere else).
Although I felt the ending just a little too predictable, the writing makes this book worth a read, and I actually wonder if my rating of it might improve another time - after all, for the second, third, subsequent readings I would know how events unfold, and not be expecting a big surprise.

Maryom's review - 3.5 stars

Publisher - John Murray (Publishers)

Genre - Adult Fiction, horror

The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin

review by Maryom

 Noah is  a troubled four year old who knows things other kids his age don't - all about Harry Potter or guns or how to score baseball for example. At night he's plagued by dreams of drowning, and cries for his mama to rescue him, but when his mother, Janie, tries to comfort him, he insists she isn't his real mama - that he lives somewhere else, with another family. Growing increasingly worried, Janie consults various doctors but the best they can suggest is that Noah must be schizophrenic, so in desperation she approaches Dr Anderson, a scientist who believes he's encountered such cases before and that they are attributable to reincarnation, and the remembering of a previous life. Janie is clutching at straws, and Anderson's interest is solely in writing up Noah as a case-study, but together they decide to track down this other family that Noah talks about in the hope that meeting them will end his nightmares.

A young child remembers a previous life, details of his 'other' family, his pets, his old house and the way in which he died. To settle his nightmares, somehow this past life must be confronted and someone presumably brought to justice for his murder. It's the sort of plot-line that you could imagine Mulder and Scully working on in the X-files, one willing to believe in any supernatural happening, the other looking for scientific evidence to support the theory - and in that sort of setting, this whole story would have sat more comfortably for me. Here though, there were such a lot of personal side-issues that I found distracting from the main story-line, so while some parts had me intrigued and wanting to know what would happen, others left me cold.

I'm not sure whether this should be classified as a 'crime' novel or not - there is a certain element of murder mystery about it, but it doesn't really pan out into anything complex or gritty and is quickly and easily solved.
There's a little of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones about it all, and if you liked that book (I didn't) this may appeal to you - just as you don't need to believe in ghosts for one, you don't need to believe in reincarnation for the other.

Maryom's review - 3 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult fiction, supernatural, crime 

The Tragickall History of Henry Fowst by Griselda Heppel

review by Maryom

"In the shadows of Walton Hall a demon lurks. His name: Mephistopheles. In 1586, young John Striven struck a bargain with him in return for help against his murderous foster brother. Nice work for a demon - or it should have been. Because somehow, his plan to trap the 12-year-old went wrong. All he needs now is another soul, in similar desperation, to call on him. Enter 13 year-old Henry Fowst. A pupil at Northwell School, Henry longs to win the Northwell History Essay Prize. Exploring the school's sixteenth century library, he stumbles across the diary of a boy his own age beginning this 20th day of Januarie, 1586...Soon Henry is absorbed in John Striven's struggles with his jealous foster-brother, Thomas Walton, who, it seems, will stop at nothing to be rid of him. Then matters take a darker turn. Battling to escape his own enemy, Henry finds his life beginning to imitate John's and when the diary shows John summoning 'an Angellick Spirit' to his aid, Henry eagerly tries the same. Unfortunately, calling up Mephistopheles lands both boys in greater danger than they'd ever bargained for..."


In this 'tragickall history', Griselda Heppel has taken the old tale of Faust, and given it a new twist, placing it in a modern context that teens can relate to. Having won a scholarship to an exclusive school, Henry is looked down on by many of the wealthier pupils, alternately rejected and bullied by them. For most of them, winning the Essay prize is just a bit of fun; for Henry, it represents a substantial cash boost - and that's before a generous parent offers a laptop as an extra incentive! His research quickly leads him into questionable actions though - and he soon realises that summoning an 'Angellick Spirit' was not such a good idea at all, that he's been drawn in to evil things and compelled to follow the Spirit's commands, and that if he continues people are going to get seriously hurt.

 The reader knows well before Henry does, that he's got himself caught up with something truly sinister, and, although I expected him to see sense and not go along with the Spirit's plans, there were times when I thought Henry would be irretrievably won over to 'the dark side'.

It's a story with many aspects to it - a little bit of fantasy and supernatural, a little bit of historical fiction, a little bit of contemporary teen problems - but above all it's a very readable, enjoyable tale.

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Matador Publishing
Genre - children's fiction, fantasy,

Snowblind by Christopher Golden

 review by Maryom

Coventry, Massachusetts is in the grip of an exceptionally bad winter. Snow is lying all around and another storm is about to hit.....But with this storm comes more than mere snow. Within it lurk shadowy, icy forms that lure people from the safety of their homes...
Twelve years later, and the inhabitants of Coventry are still mourning those who went missing that dreadful night....and another huge snow storm is on the way. What will it bring this time?

Snowblind is a chilling, spine-tingling read - all the things you expect from a supernatural thriller. A lot of ghost stories leave me un-moved, but this managed to get under my skin, in a creepy, keep checking over my shoulder, way.

It starts rather slowly - there's a lot of setting the scene, introducing quite a large cast of main characters and letting the reader into their lives - but once it gets going and really on to the freaky storm sections, the pace and the chills pick up. It's definitely a book to read by the fire, with the lights on and the curtains drawn. Setting the events at the time of a massive snowstorm ups the chill factor  - I read this during the last week of sunny weather and was surprised at times to look up and not see snow falling!

There's a lot in there to appeal to lovers of French TV programme The Returned - something to read while they're waiting for next series maybe? 

Maryom's review -  4 stars
Publisher -Headline
Genre - thriller, adult fiction

Savage Magic by Lloyd Shepherd

review by Maryom

1814 - another killer is on the loose in London. This time the victims are all members of a group of privileged young men whose main aim in life is the pursuit of pleasure in all its forms. The victims are found behind closed doors, with no signs of forced entry, all left wearing a satyr's mask. A classic closed-doors mystery? Not really, for, as usual when Charles Horton finds himself involved, the signs point to a more supernatural force.

This time Horton is on his own as John Harriott is indisposed. Sent by Magistrate Aaron Graham to Thorpe Lee House in Surrey, Horton at first finds himself investigating an outbreak of witchcraft, then getting pulled in to the spate of murders in London.
Horton's wife Abigail is indisposed too - the events of The Poisoned Island have left her disturbed in her mind. To seek a cure, she commits herself to a madhouse. Soon, perhaps inevitably, Horton's investigations and the series of deaths begin to point in the direction of one of Abigail's fellow inmates.

Savage Magic is another wonderful mystery in Lloyd Shepherd's signature mix of history and supernatural.
While I didn't find it quite as enthralling as Horton and Harriott's last outing in The Poisoned Island
I did still enjoy it. There are plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader enthralled; though there are equally occasions when the reader, having a better overview of events, knows more than Horton ( I really wanted someone to prod him in the right direction at times).
Although she was always independent for the time, definitely not a shrinking violet hiding from the seamier side of life,  I very much like that Abigail has a larger part to play in events. And,who knows, maybe in future she'll be even more involved with her husband's cases.

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Simon & Schuster
Genre - adult, crime, historical fiction, supernatural

other reviews; Curiosity Killed the Bookworm ,
                        For Winter Nights 

Watchers by Philip Caveney

Review by The Mole

Will Booth's father was knocked off his bike and killed a year ago but both Will and his mum are not getting over it. Will sees it in his mum and feels it in himself and try as he might he can't get either of them to start to move on. Then one quiet day, while walking his dog, a scruffy looking strange man tells him his dad has a message for him. Wary, frightened and very much spooked, Will flees back home only to meet him again the next time he's out walking and then he tells Will he was waiting for him. And then Will has the most terrifying time of his life with his family and friends in mortal peril.

This is one of those books that if you write a synopsis, any synopsis, you cannot do the book justice. Many a book has a fantastic synopsis but you end up reading something that bears little resemblance but this book... I have read (and enjoyed) Philip Caveney's writings before but this was something different - it was even more captivating. It's a book I definitely wanted to get to the end of but I didn't want to finish.

With an audience of 9+ (in my opinion) this should appeal to boys and probably girls too. Thoroughly enjoyable and an easy read.

Publisher - Fledgling Press
Genre - Children's supernatural thriller

Buy Watchers from Amazon

Sammy Feral's Diaries of Weird by Eleanor Hawken

Review by The Mole

Sammy Feral is a normal boy whose family own a zoo and whose family are just a little bit weird. In the first Sammy Feral (Sammy Feral's Diaries of Weird) book his family were all turned into werewolves. He met Donny and Red, cryptozoologists, (who are also a little bit weird - in their own way) as he tried to find a way to get them back to normalish. I say normalish because he's hardly normal himself - he can talk to weird animals that don't exist. These are fun books that are captivating for the younger reader with lots of black and white illustrations.

 Yeti Rescue


A Mongolian Death Worm turns up at his zoo, he’s not that surprised. The Death Worm needs help: his best friend, Bert the Yeti Chief, has gone missing. 
 Can Sammy summon the Ministry of Yetis and rescue Bert? He’s going to need help from his old friends Donny and Red, not to mention a very reluctant Wish Frog…


The Hound Curse

To make some extra money for Feral Zoo, Sammy, Red and Donny decide to promote their cryptozoology business – investigating animals that don’t exist. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything! Hired to check out sightings of a ghost dog, the friends uncover the terrifying legend of the Hell Hound. Anyone who is seen by this terrible beast is struck with a death curse. So when Sammy’s best friend Mark runs into the deadly dog, Sammy knows he doesn’t have long to figure out how to save him!

Publisher - Quercus Kids 
Genre Children's 8+ supernatural adventure

Buy Sammy Feral's Diaries of Weird from Amazon

Don't Look Back by S B Hayes

review by Maryom

When they were young, Sinead and her older brother Patrick would play a game they called 'Following Patrick's Footsteps' - wherever he went, she had to follow, doing exactly as he did. Now grown up into a domineering, manipulative drug addict, used to having all his whims gratified, particularly by his mother, Patrick has disappeared. Behind him he's left a series of clues for Sinead to follow, just like in their old childhood game. Can she follow in his footsteps one last time and save him? and, if she does, will she finally be free of the hold he has over her?
The trail leads to a mysterious country house and to a young man who's returned to his family home in search of answers of his own...

Don't Look Back is a YA thriller with heavy supernatural overtones. You have to suspend disbelief as you read - not for any supernatural element (that goes without saying) but to accept that anyone could be as domineering, manipulative and self-centred as Patrick - and that he's been allowed, even encouraged, to continue that way. The attitude of his mother doesn't make any sense nor does Sinead's compulsion to join in his 'game'. Accept all this though and it's a good story. One clue leads Sinead to the next - and inevitably into danger.

I didn't like the ending though. Things didn't feel resolved - but maybe that's because the outcome wasn't the one I'd have chosen.


 Maryom's review - 3.5 stars
Publisher - Quercus
Genre - YA supernatural thriller

Buy Don't Look Back from Amazon

Beyond by Graham McNamee

review by Maryom

Jane has always had a shadowy figure lurking at the back of her mind, encouraging her to do stupid things that have brought her close to death several times. Although dismissed by her parents and doctors as accidents, Jane knows that her 'shadow' is controlling her actions and forcing her to do these things. Now in her teens, Jane has decided that enough is enough; that she will end up dead if she can't free herself from the ghostly presence. With her friend, Lexi, she tries to find out who or what may be haunting her mind but they end up on the trail of a far more substantial serial killer -  and in danger of a very different kind.

Beyond is an excellent gripping supernatural thriller, playing on our fears of what may lie in wait after death, with the added 'bonus' of a real-life killer thrown in as well.  It's wonderfully atmospheric - conjuring up both the shadowy half-world of Jane's mind and the real Canadian Raincoast setting of dark forest cloaked in almost perpetual rain where events are played out.  I complain that a lot of ghost or horror stories miss their mark for me - possibly by trying too hard - but this one hit it.
Although aimed at the teen/YA age group, I'm sure this will appeal to older readers who like a scary read with less gore than some adult horror.

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Hodder Children's Books
Genre - Teen/YA, horror, supernatural, thriller
 

Buy Beyond from Amazon


Other reviews; The Overflowing Library

Stained Glass by Catherine Czerkawska

 review by Maryom

Stained Glass is yet another of the numerous free downloads I found over Christmas. This time something slightly different - a collection of three short supernatural stories, 22 pages in total;
- Stained Glass - in which a house-renovator sees more than he'd expected through the reclaimed window he installs.
- The Penny Execution - an unusual 'peep-show' style antique that's rather more gruesome than its purchaser anticipated.
- The Sleigh - set in Poland, this story is made all the more chilling by being inspired by the author's family history.

I'm not normally a fan of supernatural/ghost stories. I don't scare easily and too many set out merely to shock the reader and then fall completely flat if they don't! These three short stories are subtler than that - think of the stories in Mrs Gaskell's Curious, If True, collection. They all managed to send shivers up my spine - even though I guessed the 'twist' in Stained Glass as I've read another story with a similar premise though completely different setting and feel (Bob Shaw's Light of Other Days)

My only complaint would be that I'd have liked more!

Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Wordarts
Genre - Short stories, supernatural/ghost stories, adult